When we in the
Western world, nurtured in the Western tradition, use the
words "Islam" and "Islamic", we tend to make a natural error
and assume that religion means the same for Muslims as it has
meant in the Western world, even in medieval times; that is to
say, a section or compartment of life reserved for certain
matters, and separate, or at least separable, from other
compartments of life designed to hold other matters. That is
not so in the Islamic world. It was never so in the past, and
the attempt in modern times to make it so may perhaps be seen,
in the longer perspective of history, as an unnatural
aberration which in Iran has ended
and in some other Islamic countries may also be nearing its
end. [written in 1988]
In classical
Islam there was no distinction between Church and state. In
Christendom the existence of two authorities goes back to the
founder, who enjoined his followers to render unto Caesar the
things which are Caesar's and to God the things which are
God's. Throughout the history of Christendom there have been
two powers: God and Caesar, represented in this world by sacerdotium and regnum, or, in
modern terms, church and state. They may be associated, they
may be separated; they may be in harmony, they may be in
conflict; one may dominate, the other may dominate; one may
interfere, the other may protest, as we are now learning
again. But always there are two, the spiritual and the
temporal powers, each with its own laws and jurisdictions, its
own structure and hierarchy. In pre-westernized Islam, there
were not two powers but one, and the question of separation,
therefore, could not arise…. At the present time, the very
notion of a secular jurisdiction and authority--of a
so-to-speak unsanctified part of life that lies outside the
scope of religious law and those who uphold it--is seen as an
impiety, indeed as the ultimate betrayal of Islam. The
righting of this wrong is the principal aim of Islamic
revolutionaries and, in general, of those described as Islamic
fundamentalists.